nch from India?" he asked.

Mary nodded.

"Then no wonder tha'rt lonely. Tha'lt be lonlier before tha's done,"
he said.

He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into the rich black
garden soil while the robin hopped about very busily employed.

"What is your name?" Mary inquired.

He stood up to answer her.

"Ben Weatherstaff," he answered, and then he added with a surly
chuckle, "I'm lonely mysel' except when he's with me," and he jerked
his thumb toward the robin. "He's th' only friend I've got."

"I have no friends at all," said Mary. "I never had. My Ayah didn't
like me and I never played with any one."

It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and
old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.

"Tha' an' me are a good bit alike," he said. "We was wove out of th'
same cloth. We're neither of us good lookin' an' we're both of us as
sour as we look. We've got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I'll
warrant."

This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard the truth
about herself in her life. Native servants always salaamed and
submitted to you, whatever you did. She had never thought much about
her looks, but she wondered if she was as unattractive as Ben
Weatherstaff and she also wondered if she looked as sour as he had
looked before the robin came. She actually began to wonder also if she
was "nasty tempered." She felt uncomfortable.

Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out near her and she
turned round. She was standing a few feet from a young apple-tree and
the robin had flown on to one of its branches and had burst out into a
scrap of a song. Ben Weatherstaff laughed outright.

"What did he do that for?" asked Mary.

"He's made up his mind to make friends with thee," replied Ben. "Dang
me if he hasn't took a fancy to thee."

"To me?" said Mary, and she moved toward the little tree softly and
looked up.

"Would you make friends with me?" she said to the robin just as if she
was speaking to a person. "Would you?" And she did not say it either
in her hard little voice or in her imperious Indian voice, but in a
tone so soft and eager and coaxing that Ben Weatherstaff was as
surprised as she had been when she heard him whistle.

"Why," he cried out, "tha' said that as nice an' human as if tha' was a
real child instead of a sharp old woman. Tha' said it almost like
Dickon talks to his wild things on th' moor."

"Do you know Dicko